Ok, why would anyone spend $50+ to buy one of these monstrosities? Two reasons:
1. You want safe overclocked performance from the latest Core2Duo processors 2. You want a 'quiet' CPU cooling solution
This review utterly failed to achieve either end-user goal because they failed to even attempt to control variables, among other problems. Instead they:
1. Completely ignored noise as an issue. Sure the winning heatsink has huge heat pipes and all, but does its built-in fan sound like a jet engine to achieve its mark? 2. Did not standardize on a single 3rd-party fan to control for the huge variance in quality from one manufacturer to another. 3. Did not standardize on a single high performance thermal compound, but rather used whatever cheap goo each manufacturer stuck in the box. 4. No indication whether any of the extra cooling performance achieved by the top sinks actually has any positive effect on overclockability (aside from noise, the only other reason why you might reasonably consider one of these heatsinks). Many overclockers fail to achieve >50% overclocks of Core2Duo due to voltage regulation, memory or chipset cooling issues, independent of CPU cooling. For example, if your motherboard can't maintain a consistent voltage for the CPU under load, it doesn't matter that your heatsink achieves -270 degrees Kelvin.
So, in summary, all I've found out is which retail combination keeps my CPU coolest, irregardless of noise and whether the extra cooling performance actually matters. Hmmmm...great. IMHO, if you need to buy one of these things (like I did a while back) do yourself a favor and go read http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . They're a lot more scientific about their methodology.
Disclaimer: I do not and have not ever worked for, nor do I know anyone who works for SilentPCReview, I just happen to think their testing methods suck a lot less.
Yup, I'm with you there. 65nm will be their saving grace, if they can get something out to market before the end of the year. Nvidia's getting way too comfortable with their monopoly in the high end to allow this to continue for very long.
I've had a Radeon 9500Pro since 2002, and been very happy with the quality of the hardware and drivers, but I've waited for six months for an ATI high end part to become the centerpiece of my next gaming rig. In the end, R600 clearly has enormous potential, but the 2900XT leaves a lot to be desired. In the interests of ending the agonizing wait once and for all, I splurged on an 8800GTX yesterday. I'm sure I'll be back in the AMD camp before too long... maybe a generation or two down the road.
Well, it may seem like a niche to you, but DirectX on Windows covers 90+% of the people who buy high end video cards in the first place. Incidentally, I have no problem running any of the iD software OpenGL releases (Doom3/Quake3,4) on my trusty old Radeon 9500Pro in Windows.
You had me for a moment there, but then you went and used the old "ATI makes bad drivers" shtick again. I understand that their Linux support has been more or less non-existent, but believe it or not, ATI drivers have been quite solid on the Windows side of the house for a while now.
We all know ATI had really poor driver development in the 90s. However, for at least the past five years or so -- since the introduction of the Radeon 9x00 DirectX9 (R300) generation hardware, their drivers have been at least as good as nVidia's, and in many ways better. They continue to get a bad rap here mostly because of their lack of Linux support and the difficult to defeat consensus that was built up over many years of bad drivers.
Now, onto R600. They really blew this generation. *But* it's not the driver team's fault per se. ATI simply took some gambles in the design phase and those gambles didn't pan out. It probably doesn't help that they had the XBox 360 and the AMD acquisition as distractions during development. On the plus side, it turns out that the 2900XT has enormous headroom -- it's going to overclock like crazy... but guess what? Thermally and power-wise, it's a disaster. Though the silicon may well clock 50-100% higher and blow away nVidia's 8800GTX, it turns out that it eats 600W PSUs for breakfast -- that's the real reason AMD couldn't release a high-end part: Few except for hardcore overclockers have 700W power supplies ready to feed this thing. That, and no one in their right mind wants a computer that uses 400+ watts idling on Microsoft Word. So AMD had to settle for the mid-market, with mediocre performance that's within an acceptable (albeit still very high) power envelope.
At far as driver quality goes, sure they've theoretically had a long time to get things right this time around, but there are bound to be issues with any newly designed generation of video hardware as complex as this. nVidia had many problems with the 8800 series when it first came out 6 months ago, but consensus is that it's settled down nicely with the recent Forceware 1.58 release. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I don't believe it's the AMD driver team that really deserves to take the hit this time around. If AMD can deliver on the long-term promise of integrated CPU+GPUs, I think this R600 fiasco will go down as a temporary deviation in the grand scheme of things.
if Microsoft is putting out a patch for a vulnerability then don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the hackers already know about the vulnerability and are actively exploiting it? Waiting up to an additional month for a patch to come out is really not that big deal when you put it in context: Some patches are plugging holes that have been happily sitting "undiscovered"(?) in the OS code base going back more than 10 years.
Yes, without a doubt, there is code in Vista that in unchanged since the first version of NT and I suspect snippets of vulnerable Win9x code is still in there too. Scary, huh?
from the equation. ATI's R600 is purported to be a disaster so nVidia took the luxury of releasing this turd at an unheard of price. Sure it's fast, but performance-wise it's within a couple percent of the already factory-overclocked BFG 8800GTX ACS at $180 more!
Nvidiots and AMD/ATI fanboys, listen up:
Embrace your fellow gamer. Meaningless paper launches like this will be par for the course in the future if one or the other company fails to compete.
Even if Vista turns out to be a big turd, Windows is so entrenched with businesses, hardware manufacturers and game developers that there's just no possible way Vista doesn't achieve nearly the same market share as WinXP enjoys today by virtue of the fact that it will be the path of least resistance for 90+% of the population. They'll fix most of the compatibility problems by the time SP1 ships, manufacturers will have updated most of their drivers and most of the whining will die down to a dull roar.
I suspect that given today's other viable alternative desktop platforms (Apple, Linux within a few years, maybe even Google at some point), Microsoft will probably concede a few percent of its desktop market share over the next 5 years, but I wouldn't say they're in trouble... yet.
What I'd like to see is S3 power state + "leave my f*ing hard drives spinning (and maybe a fan blowing on them for good measure)".
I can't seem to find an easy way to implement such a state (short of adding a second dedicated PSU?) but it's precisely what I believe is needed. How long do you think your data is gonna last with your hard drives spinning up and down a dozen times a day every time a packet is destined for your NIC? Hard drives take up what, 8 watts ongoing? It's really the CPU and Graphics that eat up juice in a modern PC, so please, leave my hard drives alone.
The parent was implying that Vonage had some sort of legitimate voice in reforming the patent system. Ha!
If IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Ford, GM, ExxonMobil, Chevron, GE and AT&T all got together and lobbied the government to reform the patent system, maybe something could be done. Good luck putting that dream team together.
Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword.
on
The End for Vonage?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Vonage lived by the sword -- they themeselves believed in patents. Whenever anyone who uses patents loses a patent war, they get what they deserve. While you were away living in your patentless fantasy world, real-world business owners who played by the rules, filed patents -- because they had no other choice!
It's things like helping categorize images or finding specific things in databases of images or inspecting contracts -- you know the kind of stuff that's really easy for humans but is really difficult for computers.
I've tried a few in the past, however, most of the available "HITs" pay only a few pennies a piece, so I'm not about to go quitting my day job to sit at home fulfilling these requests quite yet.
Vote 'yes' to join with China by installing firewalls at the border so that we can protect your children from nasty American home made videos on Youtube.
Vote 'no' to maintain a free society, but allow evil American culture to seep into the brains of your children. Oh why won't you think of the children!
is protection from American hegemony on teh Intarwebs.
Since most Canadians don't know much about what their country stands for, or it's history beyond the lessons gleened from beer commercial slogans, many peer south for queues about what it is to be Canadian. And what is it, in a nutshell? I am *not* American.
Yes, having your national identity centered around something you're not may be difficult for most Americans to understand, but perhaps I can put it in context for you: Not being American generates nationalistic feelings among Canadians akin to the way that being Republican, embracing democracy, Capitalism or the right to bear arms resonates with some Americans.
The broadcasters know this sentiment is strong among a sizable chunk of the Canadian populace, and they're not above using it as a tool to convince the CRTC to protect them from the big bad wolf even when it's clearly absurd to think that a Canadian government entity can in any way regulate or control information on the Internet.
Though I must admit, it'll be fun to watch them try!
Once you get used to it, it's actually pretty easy to use. The problem with analog controls is that you can't add/remove them easily once a device is made. Do you work for BMW? You should.
IMHO, the most backwards way to develop a user interface is to make it as flexible as possible, just in case someone thinks of a new feature to add after the product's been delivered. I've been using computers, gadgets and technology in general for 25+ years and I'm getting to the point that I'm sick of so-called flexible, complex UIs. I use Kubuntu at work -- I understand complex, but when I'm driving, I just want to turn the damn heat down and don't want to have to navigate menus to accomplish the task. I get why companies make flexible UIs, but I don't buy the argument that it's what users really want. Companies build generic platforms like iDrive so they can stuff as many gadgets and doodads into them as possible over the next decade -- which is more or less necessary to keep pace with their competitors. Of course, if they sat down every 1-2 model years and looked at the most universal features that users need to have access to and purpose-built a UI for them, I bet you the iDrive would be MIA. Due to market pressures it won't happen, but I don't buy the argument that people really need a whole lot of UI flexibility in most day-to-day items. Once the novelty of gadgety features wears off, you're left with an inferior interface to access the items you really need (e.g. try direct dialing a 10-digit phone number on a Treo.)
I fail to see how you got to this conclusion. It's just an observation: patients pay the bills, patients want quick fixes, patients demand the treatments they see on TV -- but the power to make decisions about what's best for the population rests in the hands of doctors. My contention is that doctors are the enablers of this over-prescription epidemic, so I place responsibility squarely on the medical establishment rather than patients themselves.
you attribute it to overperscription of antibiotics. To counter that assertion, consider that drug resistant strains of HIV are showing up. Are you going to argue that HIV retro-virals are being overperscribed? Though there are significant differences between bacteria and viruses such as HIV, current thinking is that anti-retrovirals may very well be playing a role in the proliferation of drug-resistant variants of HIV... I'm not sure that it's an over-prescription problem in the same sense, but similar selection factors may be at work.
But that's the whole point. The average person *can't* be trusted to take all their antibiotics, so the problem continues because the path of least resistance (and most profit) for doctors is to succumb to the demands of their patients. The inevitable long-term result is that antibiotics will no longer work and the death rate from bacterial infections will gradually return to the rate at which it naturally stood for thousands of years before antibiotics were discovered.
In the short-term, we can slow the deteriorating effectiveness of antibiotics by mandating hard restrictions on the prescription of antibiotics.
There are the folks like my parents who are just starting to understand the idea behind PVRs or simply want something that "just works". They're likely to go out and get a Tivo -- it's the most recognized brand name and seemingly simplest to setup for the non-technical majority. I suspect that's somewhere around two thirds of the PVR market right there. Then there are the the hardcore MythTV tweakers, who build their own PVR out of old PC parts and a capture card, use it to listen to their MP3 collections, play MAME and strip commercials from their favorite shows before transcoding and uploading them to their iPods.
That leaves this middle ground where presumably a person is not savvy enough to install Sage or Myth, but is happy administering a WinXP box that sits mostly idle in the living room so it can be within reach of the cable/sat connection. Yeah, that pretty much explains why it's a niche market.
Regardless how good or bad it is, you and I both know Vista will find its way onto 90+% of desktops as home users and corporations upgrade their computers within the next 2-3 years. Retail sales are a drop in the bucket for Microsoft. If it turns out to be a real turd (ala WinMe, which incidentally I don't believe Vista is anything like), adoption may be a bit slower than XP.
All I see in this article is an opportunistic activist using the launch of Vista to reiterate a general disdain for corporate hegemony with a bunch of vague platitudes and appeals to emotion.
Can I download DRM-free movies/music from bittorrent with Vista? Yes. Can I rip and burn DVDs with Vista? Yes. Can I buy a computer without Vista and install Linux on my own? Yes. Does Vista prevent me from visiting Internet sites devoted to unpopular, taboo or anti-corporate sub-culture? No. Does Vista curtail by ability to create art or publish my viewpoint for the entire world to see? No.
This article points out that even doctors are susceptible to drug company advertising:
"...according to a review published in the Jan. 19, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association. Ashley Wazana, M.D., of McGill University, analyzed 29 studies of relations between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry and found that the industry's marketing efforts clearly influence doctors' prescribing habits, although most doctors do not believe this to be true."
Get a fast responding LCD monitor ( 16ms), get a good graphics card and play your games at native resolution. There, problem solved.
And LCDs do not have a "refresh" rate like CRTs. 60Hz on an LCD does not cause eyestrain in any applications I've used. This is because the light producing element in an LCD is a fluorescent backlight that refreshes at the equivalent of several thousand times per second. True, the LCD crystal orientations may only change at 60Hz or lower (depending on their *response* time), but this doesn't create eyestrain. What it can cause is blurry moving images, which as I mentioned, can be alleviated by using a model that has a fast response time.
About the only thing that LCD hasn't quite solved is obtaining ideal contrast and color accuracy for graphics work at reasonably low brightness levels. This is starting to change though. In 5 years I predict CRTs will be almost completely obsolete, even for the most demanding CRT users.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, why would anyone spend $50+ to buy one of these monstrosities? Two reasons:
1. You want safe overclocked performance from the latest Core2Duo processors
2. You want a 'quiet' CPU cooling solution
This review utterly failed to achieve either end-user goal because they failed to even attempt to control variables, among other problems. Instead they:
1. Completely ignored noise as an issue. Sure the winning heatsink has huge heat pipes and all, but does its built-in fan sound like a jet engine to achieve its mark?
2. Did not standardize on a single 3rd-party fan to control for the huge variance in quality from one manufacturer to another.
3. Did not standardize on a single high performance thermal compound, but rather used whatever cheap goo each manufacturer stuck in the box.
4. No indication whether any of the extra cooling performance achieved by the top sinks actually has any positive effect on overclockability (aside from noise, the only other reason why you might reasonably consider one of these heatsinks). Many overclockers fail to achieve >50% overclocks of Core2Duo due to voltage regulation, memory or chipset cooling issues, independent of CPU cooling. For example, if your motherboard can't maintain a consistent voltage for the CPU under load, it doesn't matter that your heatsink achieves -270 degrees Kelvin.
So, in summary, all I've found out is which retail combination keeps my CPU coolest, irregardless of noise and whether the extra cooling performance actually matters. Hmmmm...great. IMHO, if you need to buy one of these things (like I did a while back) do yourself a favor and go read http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . They're a lot more scientific about their methodology.
Disclaimer: I do not and have not ever worked for, nor do I know anyone who works for SilentPCReview, I just happen to think their testing methods suck a lot less.
http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume.php
Your welcome.
Yup, I'm with you there. 65nm will be their saving grace, if they can get something out to market before the end of the year. Nvidia's getting way too comfortable with their monopoly in the high end to allow this to continue for very long.
I've had a Radeon 9500Pro since 2002, and been very happy with the quality of the hardware and drivers, but I've waited for six months for an ATI high end part to become the centerpiece of my next gaming rig. In the end, R600 clearly has enormous potential, but the 2900XT leaves a lot to be desired. In the interests of ending the agonizing wait once and for all, I splurged on an 8800GTX yesterday. I'm sure I'll be back in the AMD camp before too long... maybe a generation or two down the road.
Well, it may seem like a niche to you, but DirectX on Windows covers 90+% of the people who buy high end video cards in the first place. Incidentally, I have no problem running any of the iD software OpenGL releases (Doom3/Quake3,4) on my trusty old Radeon 9500Pro in Windows.
You had me for a moment there, but then you went and used the old "ATI makes bad drivers" shtick again. I understand that their Linux support has been more or less non-existent, but believe it or not, ATI drivers have been quite solid on the Windows side of the house for a while now.
We all know ATI had really poor driver development in the 90s. However, for at least the past five years or so -- since the introduction of the Radeon 9x00 DirectX9 (R300) generation hardware, their drivers have been at least as good as nVidia's, and in many ways better. They continue to get a bad rap here mostly because of their lack of Linux support and the difficult to defeat consensus that was built up over many years of bad drivers.
Now, onto R600. They really blew this generation. *But* it's not the driver team's fault per se. ATI simply took some gambles in the design phase and those gambles didn't pan out. It probably doesn't help that they had the XBox 360 and the AMD acquisition as distractions during development. On the plus side, it turns out that the 2900XT has enormous headroom -- it's going to overclock like crazy... but guess what? Thermally and power-wise, it's a disaster. Though the silicon may well clock 50-100% higher and blow away nVidia's 8800GTX, it turns out that it eats 600W PSUs for breakfast -- that's the real reason AMD couldn't release a high-end part: Few except for hardcore overclockers have 700W power supplies ready to feed this thing. That, and no one in their right mind wants a computer that uses 400+ watts idling on Microsoft Word. So AMD had to settle for the mid-market, with mediocre performance that's within an acceptable (albeit still very high) power envelope.
At far as driver quality goes, sure they've theoretically had a long time to get things right this time around, but there are bound to be issues with any newly designed generation of video hardware as complex as this. nVidia had many problems with the 8800 series when it first came out 6 months ago, but consensus is that it's settled down nicely with the recent Forceware 1.58 release. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I don't believe it's the AMD driver team that really deserves to take the hit this time around. If AMD can deliver on the long-term promise of integrated CPU+GPUs, I think this R600 fiasco will go down as a temporary deviation in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, without a doubt, there is code in Vista that in unchanged since the first version of NT and I suspect snippets of vulnerable Win9x code is still in there too. Scary, huh?
from the equation. ATI's R600 is purported to be a disaster so nVidia took the luxury of releasing this turd at an unheard of price. Sure it's fast, but performance-wise it's within a couple percent of the already factory-overclocked BFG 8800GTX ACS at $180 more!
Nvidiots and AMD/ATI fanboys, listen up:
Embrace your fellow gamer. Meaningless paper launches like this will be par for the course in the future if one or the other company fails to compete.
Even if Vista turns out to be a big turd, Windows is so entrenched with businesses, hardware manufacturers and game developers that there's just no possible way Vista doesn't achieve nearly the same market share as WinXP enjoys today by virtue of the fact that it will be the path of least resistance for 90+% of the population. They'll fix most of the compatibility problems by the time SP1 ships, manufacturers will have updated most of their drivers and most of the whining will die down to a dull roar.
I suspect that given today's other viable alternative desktop platforms (Apple, Linux within a few years, maybe even Google at some point), Microsoft will probably concede a few percent of its desktop market share over the next 5 years, but I wouldn't say they're in trouble... yet.
What I'd like to see is S3 power state + "leave my f*ing hard drives spinning (and maybe a fan blowing on them for good measure)".
I can't seem to find an easy way to implement such a state (short of adding a second dedicated PSU?) but it's precisely what I believe is needed. How long do you think your data is gonna last with your hard drives spinning up and down a dozen times a day every time a packet is destined for your NIC? Hard drives take up what, 8 watts ongoing? It's really the CPU and Graphics that eat up juice in a modern PC, so please, leave my hard drives alone.
The parent was implying that Vonage had some sort of legitimate voice in reforming the patent system. Ha!
If IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Ford, GM, ExxonMobil, Chevron, GE and AT&T all got together and lobbied the government to reform the patent system, maybe something could be done. Good luck putting that dream team together.
Whenever anyone who uses patents loses a patent war, they get what they deserve. While you were away living in your patentless fantasy world, real-world business owners who played by the rules, filed patents -- because they had no other choice!
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
You can see the type of work available for anyone to process on Amazon's Mechanical Turk right here: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/findhits?match=false
It's things like helping categorize images or finding specific things in databases of images or inspecting contracts -- you know the kind of stuff that's really easy for humans but is really difficult for computers.
I've tried a few in the past, however, most of the available "HITs" pay only a few pennies a piece, so I'm not about to go quitting my day job to sit at home fulfilling these requests quite yet.
Vote 'yes' to join with China by installing firewalls at the border so that we can protect your children from nasty American home made videos on Youtube.
Vote 'no' to maintain a free society, but allow evil American culture to seep into the brains of your children. Oh why won't you think of the children!
Sometimes i rush to post and miss the obvious stuff.
is protection from American hegemony on teh Intarwebs.
Since most Canadians don't know much about what their country stands for, or it's history beyond the lessons gleened from beer commercial slogans, many peer south for queues about what it is to be Canadian. And what is it, in a nutshell? I am *not* American.
Yes, having your national identity centered around something you're not may be difficult for most Americans to understand, but perhaps I can put it in context for you: Not being American generates nationalistic feelings among Canadians akin to the way that being Republican, embracing democracy, Capitalism or the right to bear arms resonates with some Americans.
The broadcasters know this sentiment is strong among a sizable chunk of the Canadian populace, and they're not above using it as a tool to convince the CRTC to protect them from the big bad wolf even when it's clearly absurd to think that a Canadian government entity can in any way regulate or control information on the Internet.
Though I must admit, it'll be fun to watch them try!
The problem with analog controls is that you can't add/remove them easily once a device is made. Do you work for BMW? You should.
IMHO, the most backwards way to develop a user interface is to make it as flexible as possible, just in case someone thinks of a new feature to add after the product's been delivered. I've been using computers, gadgets and technology in general for 25+ years and I'm getting to the point that I'm sick of so-called flexible, complex UIs. I use Kubuntu at work -- I understand complex, but when I'm driving, I just want to turn the damn heat down and don't want to have to navigate menus to accomplish the task. I get why companies make flexible UIs, but I don't buy the argument that it's what users really want. Companies build generic platforms like iDrive so they can stuff as many gadgets and doodads into them as possible over the next decade -- which is more or less necessary to keep pace with their competitors. Of course, if they sat down every 1-2 model years and looked at the most universal features that users need to have access to and purpose-built a UI for them, I bet you the iDrive would be MIA. Due to market pressures it won't happen, but I don't buy the argument that people really need a whole lot of UI flexibility in most day-to-day items. Once the novelty of gadgety features wears off, you're left with an inferior interface to access the items you really need (e.g. try direct dialing a 10-digit phone number on a Treo.)
But that's the whole point. The average person *can't* be trusted to take all their antibiotics, so the problem continues because the path of least resistance (and most profit) for doctors is to succumb to the demands of their patients. The inevitable long-term result is that antibiotics will no longer work and the death rate from bacterial infections will gradually return to the rate at which it naturally stood for thousands of years before antibiotics were discovered.
In the short-term, we can slow the deteriorating effectiveness of antibiotics by mandating hard restrictions on the prescription of antibiotics.
There are the folks like my parents who are just starting to understand the idea behind PVRs or simply want something that "just works". They're likely to go out and get a Tivo -- it's the most recognized brand name and seemingly simplest to setup for the non-technical majority. I suspect that's somewhere around two thirds of the PVR market right there. Then there are the the hardcore MythTV tweakers, who build their own PVR out of old PC parts and a capture card, use it to listen to their MP3 collections, play MAME and strip commercials from their favorite shows before transcoding and uploading them to their iPods.
That leaves this middle ground where presumably a person is not savvy enough to install Sage or Myth, but is happy administering a WinXP box that sits mostly idle in the living room so it can be within reach of the cable/sat connection. Yeah, that pretty much explains why it's a niche market.
Regardless how good or bad it is, you and I both know Vista will find its way onto 90+% of desktops as home users and corporations upgrade their computers within the next 2-3 years. Retail sales are a drop in the bucket for Microsoft. If it turns out to be a real turd (ala WinMe, which incidentally I don't believe Vista is anything like), adoption may be a bit slower than XP.
The same thing we do every night Pinky, build a million OLPC botnet and try to take over the world!
...or why I should care?
All I see in this article is an opportunistic activist using the launch of Vista to reiterate a general disdain for corporate hegemony with a bunch of vague platitudes and appeals to emotion.
Can I download DRM-free movies/music from bittorrent with Vista? Yes.
Can I rip and burn DVDs with Vista? Yes.
Can I buy a computer without Vista and install Linux on my own? Yes.
Does Vista prevent me from visiting Internet sites devoted to unpopular, taboo or anti-corporate sub-culture? No.
Does Vista curtail by ability to create art or publish my viewpoint for the entire world to see? No.
So, what's really behind this diatribe?
This article points out that even doctors are susceptible to drug company advertising:
"...according to a review published in the Jan. 19, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association. Ashley Wazana, M.D., of McGill University, analyzed 29 studies of relations between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry and found that the industry's marketing efforts clearly influence doctors' prescribing habits, although most doctors do not believe this to be true."
Get a fast responding LCD monitor ( 16ms), get a good graphics card and play your games at native resolution. There, problem solved.
And LCDs do not have a "refresh" rate like CRTs. 60Hz on an LCD does not cause eyestrain in any applications I've used. This is because the light producing element in an LCD is a fluorescent backlight that refreshes at the equivalent of several thousand times per second. True, the LCD crystal orientations may only change at 60Hz or lower (depending on their *response* time), but this doesn't create eyestrain. What it can cause is blurry moving images, which as I mentioned, can be alleviated by using a model that has a fast response time.
About the only thing that LCD hasn't quite solved is obtaining ideal contrast and color accuracy for graphics work at reasonably low brightness levels. This is starting to change though. In 5 years I predict CRTs will be almost completely obsolete, even for the most demanding CRT users.
http://hdkeys.com/